pearl jam
by broken halleluiah
Summary: Sometimes simple acts of kindness made Greg emotional. Sometimes Greg's emotions made Pearl uncomfortable. They put up with each other, regardless. / Greg and Pearl and an olive branch.


**The last time I had these characters interact, they got so close to bonding and then the whole thing went up in flames. I felt the need to remedy this.**

 **I live for awkwardness, so this is probably my favorite character dynamic to write. Ever. Okay, enjoy.**

* * *

Anyplace could feel like home, Greg had always maintained, if you went through the effort to make it cozy. Even the cramped interior of his office at the carwash.

He hadn't ever done much decorating inside. He didn't usually spend a lot of time in his office after hours. The walls were covered with coloring pages, mostly Crying Breakfast Friends ones that Greg had hidden away in the office because he didn't have the heart to tell Steven that they sort of bummed him out. But they were colorful enough company, especially on the winter nights that got a little too cold to sleep out in the van without the risk of catching his death. In fact, he was pretty sure he had already caught it.

So for added coziness, he had the oldies station blaring from a handheld radio sitting on the desk, and the thermostat cranked up to about 85 degrees. Greg had dragged the mattress in from the back of his van and wedged it between his desk and the wall. He sat on it now, shivering under a threadbare blanket and several clean towels he'd supplemented for extra warmth. Honestly, if this homey atmosphere didn't do much to cure what ailed him, he should probably think about driving to the drug store before too long.

He sneezed, violently slamming his head against the side of the desk. Maybe he ought to drive straight to the hospital.

Greg's heart leapt at the sound of a knock on the door. His first thought was _Steven,_ but he had called and told the Gems they probably shouldn't let Steven come by for the next few days. He steeled himself against a pang of loneliness and struggled to his feet, popping the lock on the door. If someone was having any kind of car trouble, he was the closest thing Beach City had to a mechanic in about a ten-mile radius- an impossible distance on a dead battery.

"Come on in," Greg called roughly, reaching for his blanket again.

The door swung inward, catching on the corner of the mattress and getting wedged there. Pearl's long nose appeared through the crack in the door as she fumbled to open it. Greg moved to pull the corner back. The door eased open, and Pearl slid inside, letting it snap shut behind her. "Hello, Greg," she said, her voice chilly as the draft she'd let in.

"Oh, uh, hey, Pearl." His lungs cinched at the gust of cold air, and he coughed into one of the towels until he saw stars. "Wh-what are you doing here?"

"Don't mind me. I'll just be a moment," Pearl murmured, more to herself than to him. She turned in a circle once in the tiny office and then sat down in the rolling chair that was taking up most of the remaining floor space in the room. She started to tidy off the desk, picking up piles of papers and tapping them against the surface until the edges aligned neatly.

"Uh… Pearl?" Greg croaked. He figured she had become distracted from her original purpose to visit, though she probably would have made a special trip if she had _known_ about the state of the carwash office. "You're welcome to do that, but do you think you could finish another time? I'm… I'm not really feeling so hot right now."

"Yes, I can see that," Pearl said grimly, pulling open one of his desk drawers. "And you've turned this place into a Petri dish, turning the temperature up like this."

Greg shrugged uneasily. He'd been cold. Now he felt like his blood was about to boil out of his skin, but somehow he didn't think Pearl would appreciate it if he took off any more layers of clothes.

Pearl pulled open another drawer and removed a pack of breath mints, carefully examining its label. "This isn't medication," she muttered. She plucked a dirty tissue off the desk, holding it between two fingers and scowling in disapproval.

Greg's face warmed with embarrassment. He would have cleaned if he'd expected visitors. Especially _her._

He knew some people, human people, who were so prim and precise that they made you overly aware of the way your breath smelled. And then there was Pearl, who could sometimes make him self-conscious of the fact that he needed to breathe at all. It was a tension that he'd largely been able to ignore over the years, largely because she had taken to ignoring him.

"After Garnet spoke with you on the phone this morning, she said there was a distinct possibility that you needed immediate medical attention. I thought _I'd_ be the judge of that. Open your mouth, please."

She'd pulled a thermometer out of her Gem. Greg resisted the urge to ask where else it had been stuck in all the years she'd had it. He reached for it, but she maneuvered away from his hand and just stuck it in his mouth instead.

"I-"

"Don't talk," she said curtly.

The seconds dragged out as they waited for the beep. Pearl folded her arms across her chest and offered no conversation. Just as well. A killer guitar solo was playing on the radio. Greg mimed playing along on an imaginary instrument, nodding his head in time. Pearl blinked down at him with a blank expression. She probably just didn't recognize the song.

He probably got a little into playing it. The tickle of a cough started deep in his chest. Greg let the air guitar drop and focused on breathing steadily. Pearl shot him a warning look, just daring him to choke on the thermometer before it had gotten a reading.

It finally beeped, just when he couldn't take it anymore. Greg shoved it into Pearl's hand and bent forward to hack violently into his towel. Dark spots crawled across his vision. His chest felt like it was ripped open, like in that one movie where all the aliens burst out of people's chests. He had always thought that looked like it hurt, and it really did. Tears squeezed out the corners of his eyes as he reached for a water bottle.

Pearl rolled the chair away as far as she could- a solid six inches- before it bumped into the opposite wall. She flattened herself against it, obviously startled.

"Sorry about it," Greg wheezed, when he had recovered enough to speak.

"That's quite alright," Pearl said. Her tone was as coolly tactful as ever, but her eyebrows actually creased with concern. Pearl glanced at the thermometer display and then tossed it into the trash. Whatever she had used it for before, it was now too contaminated to keep around.

"Hey, do you… you know who sang that song?" Greg leaned his head back against the wall, dizzy and exhausted.

"No."

"Pearl Jam," he croaked.

She didn't say anything.

"I just… P-Pearl Jam. I thought it was…"

"I get it. Please don't hurt yourself."

He laughed, but that sort of hurt, too.

"I wasn't sure if you were ill enough to warrant this, but it's apparent that you are," Pearl said with a sigh. She drew some fancy glass bottle out of her gem- that really shouldn't still surprise him, when they did that- and uncorked the stopper, dabbing the contents onto a clean rag from on top of the washing machine. "I'm not sure how well it will work, but it's worth a try, at least."

She folded the cloth and laid it across Greg's forehead. It was beyond cool, cold as ice water, in fact, but the relief didn't stop there. Greg felt some of the pain leech out of his throbbing temple. The tightness in his chest eased ever so slightly, and his congested nose opened up enough to allow in the faint scent of flowers.

Flowers.

"Is it doing anything? I can't really tell. You always look a bit strange to me." There was no bite behind Pearl's words. Sometimes she just said that stuff without even meaning to.

Greg opened his eyes. "Pearl? Is this…" He reached for the bottle on the desk. "Did you…?"

"Oh!" Pearl handed it to him. "Yes, we just recently got the fountain working again, so I was able to go fill it up this morning."

Greg pulled the cloth off his forehead and took a couple of long, slow breaths, inhaling the floral fragrance. He felt his throat constricting for an entirely different reason.

"Sorry, it would probably have worked better if I'd been able to bring it by earlier… You know the longer the tears are out of the fountain, the less potent…" Pearl trailed off, noticing the moisture pooling underneath Greg's eyes. "What's the matter?"

"N-nothing. It's helping. Thank you, Pearl."

"You're quite welcome," she said politely.

"I just meant, you didn't have to… y'know." He swallowed with some difficulty. "You didn't have to do this."

Pearl's eyes widened. She watched his face with both fascination and anxiety. "Stop that. Please. Please stop."

Tears spilled over Greg's cheeks. Pearl bit her lip. She reached for his shoulder and then pulled her hand back, tapping long fingers on the desk nervously.

"Please don't do that," she said quietly. "I really… I don't know what to do now."

It struck him as both hilarious and heart-breaking, how utterly lost she looked. He chuckled to himself, pressing his palms against his eyes to staunch the flow of tears. He really didn't mean to make her so uncomfortable. But the _flowers_.

"It's just really nice of you. That's all."

"Honestly, it wasn't any issue." Pearl waved a hand dismissively, attempting a smile. "No… no 'big deal,' as you say."

"Right," Greg agreed, dragging an arm under his eyes. "No big deal."

"Yes. Excellent. Now if you need anything else, please don't hesitate to contact us," Pearl said, clearing her throat and tapping her fingers together.

"Thanks."

"I'll let you get some sleep, then," Pearl said. She picked up the bottle and twisted and untwisted the stopper with anxious fingers. "Goodnight, Greg."

He wondered, sometimes, what she had asked Pearl to do when she was gone. If Steven was the only one Pearl had been tasked with caring for. He wondered, but he didn't ask.

Pearl took a step towards the door and then whirled around, holding the half-empty glass bottle up with a sheepish look. "I ought to leave the rest of this for you, shouldn't I?" She placed the bottle back on the desk and then kicked back the corner of the cot so she could wedge the door open again. She hesitated on the threshold, repeating, "Um, goodnight."

"Goodnight," Greg echoed. She shut the door behind her.

He turned the radio back up and rolled over on his side, draping the cloth across his forehead again. The scent of roses wafted through the room, and he really hadn't been wrong. It didn't take much to make a place feel like home.


End file.
